It’s a fine line between advocating for yourself and being a douche bag. And it’s really important to know when you’re crossing it and I’m speaking to myself right now. My efforts on my book are fully in the marketing now, which means pushing, pushing, pushing. Writing letters, emails, sending galleys, doing my social media, blah blah blah. In other and much better news, I’m sticking to the challenge of writing every day and I’m not saying it’s pretty, but it’s something.
Are you with me in writing bootcamp or what? Progress reports please!
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Betsy Lerner 
No song reference??
Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift
Bootcamp yes and more! After searching for agents for 3 months on Publisher’s Marketplace with no result, I’m ready to pop. I’ve been reviewing old stories, editing, and writing some new pieces. It feels SO good. And to add to the mix a hybrid press, after waiting 9 months, has offered to publish my novel (10 years in the making), so I have to read the novel over to see what I want to change. Alot on my plate but it’s very exciting. All the best with Shred. A playwriting friend who I always tell to Break a leg, told me to “break a hand.” Of course not literally, but saying “good luck” to an actor is bad luck, according to theater superstition. So I will just say…proceed.
I wrote a long essay hoping that Publication A would want it. They didn’t, so I rewrote it, hoping that Publication B would want it. They didn’t.
“Pushing, pushing, pushing” is what I need to be doing now. Thanks for the reminder.
I’m having trouble negotiating time to write. I let everything else get in my way and don’t make time but am going to commit now, today once I get the nice cop to unlock the office I forgot my key for. Hopefully in a year, I’ll be complaining like you are. 🙂
I joined an accountability group and it has made all the difference in my ability to write daily. It’s like Catholic nuns crossed with a suicide hot line. I’m actually making progress on a first draft of a novel I’ve been trying to write for years. It feels scary as shit but also fantastic and astonishing and badass. So maybe I missed something, but Betsy, what’s the name of your book??
So that’s where it is. (haha)
I write every day – if anything, I probably need a break.
My current dilemma is this – I’ve got an ending snafu. I’m 130K into this thing (have to go back and cut it down), and I could be DONE with it, except. The ending. It’s driving me to TikTok where I dwell in the land of videos about empaths, pets, and whatnot.
A woman I was doing a job for (of course, I don’t make money writing) said you must be really excited about having a book out now…Then I explained how writing a book is the easy part and how impossible marketing was with a book being out of date before it’s published. She was on a downer too. No wonder I’ve no friends…More time to write, I suppose.
In full on prep mode for a trip to NY. Doing the touristy things with friends…probably mostly in the rain. Fun times! Bootcamp starts for me when I return. She says.
Regarding your last blog: Will you accept two shorter poems and a letter encouraging another author in lieu of 500 words? (The letter was 380 words).
Concerning shameless self-promotion. Doesn’t that masquerade as the author’s “platform”?
Because of discovering this blog, I just finished “The Bridge Ladies” and then sent it out immediately to an author friend. I’m conflicted in doing this. On the plus side, it helps with giving the author exposure. On the minus side, does an author of your caliber really need exposure? It cost you a sale, but I don’t think that recommending a book actually causes many people to actually buy that book, unless you’re a celebrity or otherwise famous (which I’m not). And besides, there’s nothing like receiving an unexpected book in the mail, especially one as terrific as that one.
Nevertheless, I beg your indulgence, or failing that, your forgiveness.
I just joined tonight. I’ve been out of touch for a while and I really need this in my life if only to help maintain my sanity. It feels better to have some consistency than to go full on hit or miss. I’ll give it my best shot…
“Are you with me in writing bootcamp or what? Progress reports please!”
Are we together in hells of our own making? Or not so much made, as cast in to them, resigned to them, even, as far as we may, reveling in them? So be it. We are writers.
Progress report. Callis, front and center, on the double.
I finished the latest re-re-re-edit of a short story cycle, and I think I finally got it right, though that is what I thought the previous several times. Several of the component stories have been published, so there’s that. I sent it out to a published yesterday, on spec.
I also sent out on spec yesterday (to a different publisher) a short CNF book I recently wrote. I still have hopes for that one. It’s prowling around in several slush piles now, gazing wistfully and petitioning for admittance.
At the beginning of the month I had one of those epiphanies we writerly types get from time to time, and decided to overturn the apple cart of my works and see if I can’t shake out some ripe ones and discard the rot. What the hell am I talking about? Here’s another metaphor: You know how we are encouraged to slay our darlings? Well, the slaughter has been tremendous, but from the fields drenched in blood, new crops will spring forth.
Darling Grunts, This is what I’m talking about. Finishing projects, sending out manuscripts, killing darlings. Blood baths. The bloodier the better. You go!
I’m with you… the 10 words a day I promised turned into a page a day, then more. It is torturous but maybe one day worth it. The novel it took me years to research and write was a warm summer breeze compared to this memoir that is costing more blood than I thought I had left to spill… Onward though. I will finish it, I will polish it, and then I will start the peddling progress…the dreaded pitch.
Is it crazy to be pitching two wildly different things at once? Is it crazy to still want all this?? because it sure feels crazy most days.
Yes, I’m with you. I’m starting the agent query. Pushing, pushing, pushing, developing, writing, rewrite, rewrite, moving forward. Left, right, left right…